Science Startles Us

1895

How Hypnotism Is Made to Help the Deaf and Dumb.

It was from the great New York Institution For the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb that the world first learned how an individual born deaf and consequently dumb could be taught to hear and speak, and now comes another discovery promising to be the greatest of all.

Professor Currier openly asserts over his own signature that he is willing that hypnotism shall be given a full opportunity to demonstrate what can be done through its agency toward the relief of the mute. He declares it to be his belief that wonders of which the most enthusiastic investigator has hardly dared to dream may be accomplished through the use of hypnotism, and, bold and progressive student as be is, is willing to afford every facility for a skilled operator to experiment on the line suggested.

Professor Currier almost took my breath away, says a writer in the Boston Herald, when, as I sat in his study at the institute looking out upon the Hudson, he announced it to be his belief that through the agencies of hypnotism a man who has been deaf from the day of his birth may be made to hear distinctly.

"The prophet of the Israelites spoke truly," said Professor Currier, "when he predicted thousands of years ago the coming of the day when the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, the tongue of the dumb shall be unloosed and the lame be made to run and leap as an hart. My friend, this day is at hand. It is already here. Gradually a force in nature — a force first mocked and ridiculed, next wondered at, now studied and made useful — has been accepted by science. And now is heralded the news that through hypnotism the latent senses are to be made healthy and vigorous, and the nerves which from birth our ignorance has hitherto allowed to slumber in him who, through some defect in nature's processes, has been unable to operate them, are to be made to convey messages of the mind as electric wires convey messages."